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Effective body scrub which leaves your skin feeling great

I love Sanctuary products and my family know that I am always more than happy to receive any of their products as a gift. I had this Spa Essentials 2 in 1 moisturising butter scrub along with two other Sanctuary products for Christmas. It is currently £6.50 but I have seen it cheaper than this on several occasions and Boots often have an offer on for three of these products for the price of two, which makes them good value.

It is 200ml size and comes in a clear tube so you can always see exactly how much is in the tube. It has a flip top which is something that I prefer as you don't have to worry about dropping the lid in the shower or having to screw it back on with wet hands. The scrub smells lovely and you can pick out a rich buttery smell and also a sweet almond fragrance. As I am applying it the smell comes out even more and it lingers on my skin for many hours afterwards even though it is washed off. I think that this is due to the exfoliation part as this goes a bit deeper into your skin.

I would describe the scrub as a cream with lots of grains in it, ranging from the size of a grain of sugar to about two millimetres across. To use, I will step under the shower to wet my skin and then squeeze some cream out onto my sponge or spa glove and then rub it using a circular motion on my body. It doesn't really lather up but it does turn into a thin cream with the grains in it. I can feel the grains on my skin especially the larger ones but it is not painful. When I am happy that I have rubbed it into the required areas I will stand back under the shower and rinse it off. I find that it does rinse off easily and I only need to give it a quick rub to finish it off.

When I have finished my skin feels a bit tingly but it does feel fresh and stimulated. I will apply a good body moisturiser and it does seem to soak in well and leaves me with lovely soft skin. It does have moisturising properties but I think that by rinsing it off you are really rinsing the moisturiser off, but you are putting some moisturiser into your skin when you are rubbing it in. By exfoliating I know I am getting rid of any dead skin cells and helping to improve my circulation and I am always glad when I have done it.

As suggested in the title it exfoliates and also moisturises at the same time which is good for people who haven't got time to do both. It last for twelve months from opening but I would always have used it within this time. I would say that I use it around once a week so a 200ml tube would probably last around three months so it is good value even if you pay full price for it. I think that this is an effective exfoliator with the added bonus of a moisturiser and it does make my skin feel clean and revitalised. I use this along with other Sanctuary products and think it is a good quality product which anyone can use.

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a great product, could improve on the scent.

I got this scrub for Christmas with a few other Spa Essentials products. I used this product predominantly on my legs, a day before, or after shaving to get my legs smooth, remove dead skin to make them look shiny and try to prevent ingrown hairs.

I liked how moisturising this scrub was, the butter in the scrub meant that using this product didn't result in dry legs, even if you over did the scrubbing, it still left legs moisturised. I never had patches of dry skin, which I am prone to, after drying myself off from the shower when I had used this product. The product itself felt quite creamy and didn't lather up, which I wasn't expecting it too. The gritty bits were sufficient enough to feel like a good scrub, leaving skin looking brighter, feeling smooth and preparing legs for shaving/a good night out. However, the gritty bits had a tendency to remain on the shower floor, not washing away easily. You get that with most scrubs, so I guess that's only a mild annoyance. So far, this product is looking like a winner.

Except one thing. The smell. It claims to be aromatic, but I can't stand it. It is overpowering, like a cheap perfume, with the tiniest hint of fruitiness. Although the smell doesn't linger on your skin, it lingers in the shower, and I couldn't stand it. I guess this is a personal preference, but something that appears a quality product, i wouldn't have expected it to smell so ...cheap.

I would recommend this product because it does do a great job, and it leaves your legs moisturised, and skin feeling soft. I just couldn't stick the smell. And ended up not using the product very often, and ditching it when moving out of my uni house. And I have found other products that do a good job, smelling a million times better. So there's my verdict.

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A nice scrub but not as expected

I've been looking for a good body scrub for ages and on my last trip to Boots the '2 in 1' claims of this one caught my eye. It costs £6.38 for a 175g tube so it's quite expensive but if it has double the benefits of a regular scrub then I figured it would be worth it.

The tube is clear so you can see the scrub inside and always know when you're running out. It has a flip top lid that make sit much more convenient to use than the screw top kind particularly when you're in the bath or shower with wet slippy hands. The packaging even though it's quite plain and simple does look high quality and it looks like quite an expensive product.

The scrub is made up mainly of scrubbing grains rather than being a cream or lotion with grains dotted through it, it's very densely packed with grains. It has mainly light grains that look like salt or sugar and then some slightly larger brown grains through it. It has a light nutty scent similar to like a mixture between shea and cocoa butter.

Although there are a lot of grains in it most of them seem to dissolve or disappear as soon as I start rubbing it into my damp skin so it doesn't feel like it's doing all that much really while I'm using it. I can feel the odd grain rubbing over my skin but these do not feel sharp and are not too harsh. It doesn't foam up or anything and it just turns to a very thin creamy layer on my skin that's barely even noticeable. It rinses off quite easily but sometimes I do find the odd grain later on that's stuck around on my skin.

Even though it doesn't really feel like it's doing much it does leave my skin feeling very smooth and soft. It also leaves a kind of oily feeling on my skin that feels very moisturising and like it's holding the moisture in. This feeling only lasts until I've dried off with a towel though and then my skin just feels soft and smooth with no greasiness at all. It does feel moisturised but I don't think it's moisturising enough so that you wouldn't need to use a body lotion, which is what the product claims to do.

You need to be careful to wash the bath out after using this because it leaves A LOT of grains in the bottom of the bath.

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OK body scrub but you'll need moisturiser as well

----- About the product -----

This product is available in a 175g see-through tube which at the time cost me £5.99 (about a year ago). The tube stands on an orange flip-top lid, which is easy to open but at the same time has a very good closure. I often leave the tube in the shower and until now have never found water inside of the lid when I came back to open it. The packaging is recyclable.The main idea for this scrub is that it is supposed to combine exfoliation, moisturisation and nourishment, so that you don't have to apply body moisturiser after the shower and as a result save time and money.

I hadn't heard about mowrah and kokum nuts before, but I am told by The Sanctuary advertisements that these contain fatty acids, including Omega 9 & 10. Not that it tells me much more, but I know that Omega acid taken internally (e.g. from oily fish) are good for your health and looks, so I assume if I apply them externally they will be good for my skin, too.

I continue looking at the active ingredients of this product and I find the following:* Sweet almond oil - locks in moisture and makes skin soft and supple* Vitamin E - as everyone surely knows is an antioxidant* Glycerin - captures moisture

The exfoliating particles in this scrub are fine natural sugar and olive pit granules. Looking at the tube in the shop, I could see the very high concentration of granules inside the tick butter consistency. To be honest, this was my main reason for choosing this product. I prefer my exfoliators thick with plenty of granules, so I can feel they are actually sloughing away dead skin cells. Despite the scrub being of thick consistency, it is easy to squeeze out of the tube.

----- Ingredients -----

If you're not interested, please skip to the next part. Unfortunately The Sanctuary website doesn't list the ingredients so I cannot just attach a link. For the people that, like me, want to know what products contain, please see below the ingredients list.

The scrub is to be applied daily in circular motion either on damp or dry skin, then rinsed off in the shower. If you have sensitive skin, I think it's better not to use it on dry skin. The exfoliator feels much harsher then because it has no moisture to glide on and dry skin creates more friction for the sugar and olive pit granules. I personally prefer to apply it on clean damp skin after I've used shower gel. On contact with water, the waxy butter turns into a milky liquid. I step away from the shower stream a bit, so that the water doesn't rinse off the product, massage in circular motion and then rinse off straight away.

----- What about properties from personal experience? -----

I found that this is a good body scrub, which you can apply according to your skin condition and preference. Either use on dry or damp skin depending on how harsh of an exfoliation you prefer. The product certainly feels more delicate on the skin than I had expected. Looking at the concentration of exfoliating particles, I thought that my skin might be too sensitive for this product, but it is not the case. A lot of the sugar content dissolves in water when applied to damp skin and there is much more of the sugar particles than of the olive pit granules. I have on a few occasions noticed that my skin was a little bit irritated afterwards, but this was only because I was massaging the product into my skin with too much eagerness. The scent of this product isn't at all nutty. It is a strong musky smell while in a tube, that is much more delicate when applied to the skin and doesn't linger on my body at all after use.

Regarding the moisturising properties, I am not so sure. Yes, the scrub certainly feels that it contains butter, but instead of moisturising my skin, I often feel that it creates a thin waxy layer on my body which on occasion I can tolerate, but I wouldn't say that this is something I find extremely pleasurable. I'm pretty sure this is due to its glycerin and paraffinum content, ingredients that I usually try to avoid as I don't like the feeling, but I have to admit, I didn't really look at the ingredients list before buying the product. The good thing is that the waxy layer doesn't transfer to the bathtub so there is no risk of slipping because of this product.

I tried a few times not to apply moisturiser afterwards and indeed, my skin didn't look dry, but it only lasted about 24 hours or until the next shower. If I go on using this body scrub for two or more days without applying moisturiser, my skin feels tight and uncomfortable.

I haven't been using this scrub every day because I don't have so much time in the morning for exfoliating plus moisturising. With frequency of usage of about once a week, it would last about a year, but I suspect with daily use all over the body, you will probably finish the tube within a month. The shelf life of this scrub is a standard 12 months so there is hardly any risk of it expiring before it is used up. I still have about 1/4 of this left but only because I stopped using it for a while and now only use it sporadically.

Finally, The Sanctuary claim that neither their ingredients nor finished products are tested on animals, but they are not on PETA's list of companies that don't. It is not clear whether this product is vegan friendly either.

----- Recommendation ------

I personally will not be purchasing this product again, because of the previously mentioned glycerin content and because I don't think it does a good job at moisturising. I would rather buy a non-moisturising version of this from The Sanctuary and have confidence that it does what it says on the tin.

If you don't mind the lack of moisturising or like products with glycerin, I am pretty sure you would like this scrub. As a scrub it does a decent job at getting rid of the dead skin cells even if not used on a daily basis. You can buy this in every Boots shop, from Sanctuary Spa or from The Sanctuary website: http://www.thesanctuary.co.uk/